Monday, July 18, 2016

In a series of occasional
blog posts, participants in our Mellon Scholars Internship and Workshop
programs will introduce themselves, discuss their experiences at the Library
Company, and share their goals for pursuing careers in the field of early African
American history. This program is generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation.

How do I create a
competitive graduate school application? What are some ways for me to excel as
a graduate student? How do I conduct research at a historical archive? These
are some of the questions we set out to answer during the Mellon Scholars
Program Workshop. This marks the program’s third year in operation. As in
previous years, we had a talented group of students from an array of different
academic and personal backgrounds. The common thread among all eight
participants was a passion for African American history.

Lasting June
13-June 17, the workshop equips students with the tools required for careers in
academia. Specifically, the program includes an intensive series of lectures,
trips, and professional development exercises: all activities geared toward
preparing students to pursue advanced degrees. I work alongside Program Director
Dr. Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Library Company Curator Krystal Appiah to
produce this unique experience for the Mellon participants.

Dr. Vanessa Holden

At colloquia
scheduled throughout the week, students were introduced to the process of
historical investigation. Speakers such as Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson and Dr.
Kellie Carter Jackson shared their scholarly work and demonstrated how to
effectively convey research findings. Dr. Vanessa Holden, who was also the
keynote speaker at LCP’s Juneteenth event, held a special session for the
workshop participants. At the meeting, Dr. Holden challenged students to
interpret and analyze primary source materials relevant to her own work. In
this manner, the Mellon Scholars were challenged to enter the mind of a
historian at the nascent stage of a project. The culmination of these seeds of evidence
was later revealed at the subsequent Juneteenth lecture, where Dr. Holden
explained her research conclusions. This gave students an expansive look at a
research project from start to finish.

Katherine Ponds

Students were
also assigned independent research topics for the week. Katherine Ponds, for
instance, chose to examine the ways in which studying and teaching the Classics
reflected Octavius Catto’s black political agenda. Participants then used the
collections of the Library Company to shed light on their individual topics.
Throughout the week, the staff worked with students to help them navigate the
archives and think critically about source materials. Participants were asked
to contextualize, interrogate, and analyze primary and secondary sources to
reveal the significance of their subjects. Their work culminated in
presentations delivered on the final day of the workshop. The colloquium was
run in formal academic fashion to familiarize students with communicating their
conclusions, receiving feedback, and answering audience questions.

Serkaddis Alemayehu, Public History
Coordinator and Digital Archives Specialist
at the Blockson Collection

A sizable amount
of the students’ time was spent outside the walls of LCP as well. We took the
group on a number of trips throughout Philadelphia to acquaint participants
with some of the other institutional resources the city has to offer. For
instance, we visited Temple University’s Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection and the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania. The Mellon Scholars also spent time at the historic
Mother Bethel AME Church where they learned about the institution’s background
and its role as a pillar of Philadelphia’s black community. Together the trips
helped to enrich students’ understandings of African American history.

Lastly, much of
the week was dedicated to demystifying the graduate school application process.
Dr. Kimberly Saunders from the University of Delaware taught students how to
craft strong applications, while LCP Librarian James Green explained how to
effectively apply for fellowships. I also led a session on personal statement
development and editing. Furthermore, we spent time speaking with students
about the expectations of graduate study. For example, I led a meeting focused
on navigating graduate school. During the session, I shared lessons I learned
through my experiences as a graduate student, and I attempted to address the
participants’ questions and concerns. Similarly, Dr. Dunbar led a graduate
seminar class so participants could experience how a graduate course operates.
Collectively the preparation sessions, research projects, enrichment trips, and
speakers worked to empower students to achieve their aspirations. Historical
investigation, archival exposure, and application formation: more than mere
topics, these themes comprise skills integral to young students entering the
world of academia. The Mellon Scholars Program was fortunate to furnish this
already talented group of students with these pivotal skills. It was extremely
rewarding to work with another cohort of gifted participants, and it was a
pleasure to be part of the Mellon Scholars Program another year.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

A View of the Tunnel
under the Thames, as it will Appear When Completed(London: S. E. Gouyn, 1828)

Perspective view, peepshow, and tunnel book are all words
that have been used to describe our recent acquisition A View of the Tunnel under the Thames, as it will Appear When
Completed.(London: S. E. Gouyn,
1828). The enchanting optical device purchased with funds from our Visual
Culture Program represents the long and complicated history of the interrelationship
of the study of optics with popular culture.

Front view of extended tunnel book A View of the Tunnel under the Thames, as it will Appear When Completed
(London: S. E. Gouyn, 1828).

Collector and scholar Richard Balzer
dates peepshows’/tunnel books’ beginnings to around the 15th century in Europe
when box-like devices with peepholes were created to learn about the mechanics
of vision. The instruments, often used by Renaissance artists to recreate
perspective, became primarily associated with the itinerant showman by the 18th
century. Later in the century peepshows entered the parlors of the affluent as the
perspective box in which a set of prints was arranged to create a three-dimensional
view designed to entertain the eye and mind. By the 1820s peepshows more
closely resembling the subject of this essay became items of more general
consumption when professionally printed and assembled for introduction into the
market as souvenirs. A channel being
constructed under the Thames River made the ideal subject for an optical device
that created a “tunnel” perspective.

The start of the construction in 1825 of the Thames Tunnel,
the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” made international news.On August 23, 1825, the Philadelphia
newspaper the National Gazette wrote about
the underground tunnel that would connect the
opposite banks of the Thames River for commercial purposes as “the
commencement of [a] novel undertaking, which will be read with interest.” Constructed
after the revolutionary designs of Marc Brunel (1769-1849), the novel
undertaking led not only to persons reading about it with interest but to the
production of novelties. From the onset of construction and despite floods and
collapses in the 1820s and 1830s, visitors flocked to see the tunnel.
Merchandise vendors selling all manner of souvenirs, including peepshows, quickly
followed. The engineering feat spurred publishers to issue over fifty different
designs of Thames Tunnel peepshows between 1825 and the early 1860s. No other
subject comprised as many of them. By probable consequence, the contemporary term
“tunnel book” soon thereafter superseded “peepshow” in our lexicon for these
devices.

Interior view of tunnel book A View of the Tunnel under the Thames, as it will Appear When Completed
(London: S. E. Gouyn, 1828).

The first Thames Tunnel peepshow issued in 1825 by London
publisher T. Brown served as the model for the graphic design of the devices,
including S. E. Gouyn’s, through the 1830s. Comprised of the imagined Eastern
and Western archways, a look through the book’s peephole reveals pedestrian and
vehicular traffic, including men on horseback, carriages, and horse-drawn
wagons. A prime article for the transatlantic book trade, our newly-acquired
peepshow may likely be the “perspective view of the tunnel under the Thames”
advertised in the New York newspaper American
in April 1828 by New York publishers and print sellers Behr & Kahl. However, once the tunnel officially opened to only
pedestrian traffic in 1843, the design evolved. Vehicular traffic no longer appeared.

This change in design provides further clues to better
understand a circa 1850 “homemade” tunnel book added to our collections in
2011. The similarities in the graphics depicting the interiors of the tunnels
of Gouyn’s and our 2011 acquisition, particularly the style of a covered wagon,
lends credence to our conjecture that the earlier acquired piece is modeled
after a Thames Tunnel book, probably issued before 1843.

After 1843 and through the 1850s, “perspective view
manufacturer” Bondy Azulay (b. 1813) became the primary manufacturer of these Thames
Tunnel novelties.His manufacturing of
the devices proved a more crude construction than earlier ones. His books also often
included two to three peepholes on the front board. The design provided views
of the tunnel traffic, as well as the river. Although the Library does not hold
a Thames Tunnel book published by Azulay, we do hold his complementary 1851 eighteen-foot
long Grand
Panorama of London and the River Thames.

Oblique view of
extended tunnel book A View of the Tunnel
under the Thames, as it will Appear When Completed (London: S. E. Gouyn, 1828).

By the early 1860s Azulay ceased to manufacture Thames
Tunnel books. In 1865 the East London Railway Company purchased the tunnel. Pedestrian
traffic halted and the tunnel became a part of the railway. Nonetheless, the
“novel undertaking” of the Thames Tunnel still endures as novel. The numerous tunnel
books created in its image continue to serve as novelties rich for the study of
Trans-Atlantic visual culture during the Victorian era.

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The Library Company of Philadelphia

The Library Company of Philadelphia is an independent research library specializing in American history and culture from the 17th through the 19th centuries. Open to the public free of charge, the Library Company houses an extensive collection of rare books, manuscripts, broadsides, ephemera, prints, photographs, and works of art. Founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, the Library Company is America's oldest cultural institution and served as the Library of Congress from the Revolutionary War to 1800. The Library Company was the largest public library in America until the Civil War.

The mission of the Library Company is to preserve, interpret, make available, and augment the valuable materials in our care. We serve a diverse constituency throughout Philadelphia and internationally, offering comprehensive reader services, an internationally renowned fellowship program, online catalogs, and regular exhibitions and public programs.